


Valetudinaria

by Okita3_Daishouri



Series: Faith, Steel, and Aether [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Female Miqo'te (Final Fantasy XIV), Fictional Religion & Theology, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Miqo'te Headcanon (Final Fantasy XIV), Miqo'te Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Seeker of the Sun Miqo'te (Final Fantasy XIV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 09:40:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30053484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Okita3_Daishouri/pseuds/Okita3_Daishouri
Summary: O'kichi Rihnn survived the Calamity, and lost everything doing so.
Series: Faith, Steel, and Aether [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2211027
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Valetudinaria

They found her shivering under a shredded Immortal Flames banner, Marques said, wearing nothing but her smallclothes and a well-made pair of boots, and clutching a Garlean gunblade like a stuffed animal. The still-healing burns on her arms and leg made guessing where the rest of her clothing went fairly easy. 'You screamed loud enough to wake the dead, when they tried to take the gunblade from you,' he’d chuckled, 'Gave us all quite a fright.'

She remembers none of this. Everything after Dalamud exploded is a blank. She’s not even sure when it was she started remembering again.

“O’kichi!”

She feels bad for stealing the wood and meat like she had, but Father Iliud would understand. He is a holy man, too. The appropriate time had long since passed, but their spirits would take pity on her, surely? The Warden was a mother, surely She would not judge her too harshly for becoming lost in her grief? She wishes she had some rose oil to add to the offerings. She settles for lifting up her arms.

“O’kichi, where are you?!”

_I reach to the sky;_

_I cry aloud to the Sun Above._

_Hear me, O Warden, Noble Azeyma!_

_Turn not away from Your chosen!_

_My cheeks are wet with tears, my throat is dry._

_The way is shadowed before me,_

_The wind has stolen my trail._

_Mother of fire, give me a sign!_

_Your people have… have…_

Her vision swims. The words lodge in her throat. Her body shudders, and she curls in on herself. The dam breaks, and she screams. “ _They’re gone!_ ” she wails into her hands, her forehead pressed to the rock. “ _Gone, gone, gone, and I am to blame!_ ”

She misses the sounds of Marques scrambling up to her until he’s gathering her up in his arms, and she thrashes out. “NO!!”

“O’kichi, what–”

“I am unclean!” she yowls as she grapples with him, “A murderer and a thief! Don’t touch me!”

Her strength flees her, and Marques holds her to his chest like a child as she collapses. “There now,” he says softly, fingers gently carding through her hair, “let it out. If the gods are just, they will understand.”

She falls asleep like that, sobbing into his robes as her pilfered offering burns away under the Thanalan sun.

* * *

She performs the rites again several turns of the moon later, successfully this time, on the second anniversary of Carteneau. Father Iliud’s sole condition is that he be allowed to help her with the preparation. She acquiesces easily. He deserved that much, after the scare she’d given everyone.

She doesn’t intend to, but she lapses back into silence once her duty has been fulfilled. Minor exaggerations of her expression and body language make her intentions easy to interpret, and she finds this preferable to speaking for the time being. Sometimes reinforcement of her meaning is necessary, like when she snapped an ale-sodden adventurer’s arm at Camp Drybone after he failed to register that the shaking of her head from side to side meant she wasn’t interested, but those instances are few and far between.

It is in this silence and rapid non-verbal fluency that she finally, truly, understands what her father had meant about the difference between hearing and listening. She spends countless nights going over every conversation she can remember for all the things she missed before, and regretting that she will never now have the chance to prove herself better to them. The exhaustion is preferable to the nightmares. Marques never presses when she breaks down on him, and she appreciates him for it.

* * *

The sun rises and sets, and rises again, as is its wont. The third anniversary of Carteneau passes, and then the fourth. Her body heals, though she doesn’t know how to feel that her flesh is unmarked by the Calamity. The wounds on her soul are slower to heal. Her nights are plagued by violent dreams, her days by unfamiliar specters. She works herself into the ground, devoting every spare moment to practice with her gunblade. When Father Iliud cautions her it might not be seen kindly to be familiar with imperial weaponry, she picks up a sword instead. She loses count of how many nights she falls asleep under the stars and find herself awaking in bed, Marques slumped over in his chair nearby.

* * *

She finds herself more and more restless as the fifth anniversary of Carteneau approaches, and it is not until she spies a caravan leaving Camp Drybone to the north that she realizes why: she’s never spent so long in the same place before. Even during the Calm, the tribe had continued to move between the legion’s various castra while stationed in the east. Her favorite had always been the one located where a great river had met the eastern sea, though she’d never been allowed inside the castrum proper, only the defensive enclosure around the aethernet gate.

Shaking herself out of her reverie, she firms her resolve. She has no elder to direct her steps now, no commander to order her march. The freedom is somewhat daunting. At Father Iliud’s suggestion, she scrapes together enough gil to afford a space on a carriage heading to Ul’dah. Walking the earth and helping those in need does not sound like fair recompense for all the Calamity’s harm in which she feels complicit, however mildly, but it is all she can do, and she prays the Twelve find mercy for her when her time comes. Two identical and identically dressed Elezen children are asleep in the carriage across from her, and she finds her own eyes struggling to stay open as the sway and creak of the carriage gently rocks her away from the waking world…

_Hear…_

_Feel…_

_Think…_


End file.
